Tinkering at The Edges or Shaking Foundations
So much of what gets paraded as ‘innovative’ or ‘visionary’ in safety is little more than tinkering at the edges. I watch the parade of safety awards and it seems the ‘tinkering at the edge award’ is the most popular.
I get calls and emails from people with years of experience in the industry who left formal associations long ago and they always come with two questions, ‘is there more?’ … ‘Is there something better?’.
Usually, these highly experienced safety people have been on the forefront of ‘brutal safety’ thinking that this is the norm. They often come with their questions knowing that: zero, counting, numerics, counting hazards, engineering and policing don’t work. When the outcome is brutalism, nothing works. This is the story of Brian and why he shifted risk and safety foundations telling his story in the book It Works, a New Approach to Risk and Safety (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/it-works-a-new-approach-to-risk-and-safety/ ).
With behaviourist (https://safetyrisk.net/the-curse-of-behaviourism/) and individualist assumptions in tow, the questions that are often asked throughout the industry are about outcomes not foundations. It’s hard to get a helpful or meaningful answer when you keep asking the wrong question in the wrong place.
Rarely is the founding discipline of the risk and safety industry challenged, such is the nature of compliance. The WHS curriculum and AIHS Body of Knowledge are classic examples of behaviourist foundations to ensure that nothing will change. Then keep repeating the word ‘professional’ often enough and then magically the industry will become one? Such is the nature of creating an institution. When any supposed reform is announced, it’s always from within, always in confirmation bias.
Yet, at the very foundation of this industry of safety are values, assumptions and practices that need to be questioned and challenged. At the heart of this mono-disciplinary industry and its zero ideology are deep seated vices that are not questioned. Instead, most discussion is about outcomes, behaviours and results, not foundations. More tinkering at the edges so that nothing will change.
Unless one is prepared to shine a transdisciplinary (https://safetyrisk.net/transdisciplinary-safety/) light on risk and safety as an institution, it is unlikely that much will improve. Most of the awards that get thrown around simply confirm founding assumptions.
However, if you question foundations in this industry those with institutional power will alienate you because of all that is invested in the status quo. What problem? There is no problem? We like it as it is? Zero is great, just believe! The Spirit of Zero will redeem you.
When we look at change in any institution over time it rarely coms from within, often as institutions crumble, envisioning (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/envisioning-risk-seeing-vision-and-meaning-in-risk/) comes from outside the institution and its dynamics to enforce psychological compliance.
Most people who despise the brutalism of safety in one way or another, psychologically and culturally leave the institution. They may still bow to the traditions in order to pay their mortgage, trot out a risk matrix or bow-tie, but they don’t drink the Kool-Aid, despite the flavouring.
The motivation behind criticism of the safety institution is not anti-compliance nor anti-safety indeed, most who question the foundation of safety wish to humanize it and make it professional, ethical and educated.
When people get sacked because injury rates increase (https://safetyrisk.net/injury-rates-are-up-youre-sacked/) you need little more evidence that the industry is ‘on the nose’. When the global mantra is a number (https://safetyrisk.net/its-always-a-number/ ), and you are committed to that number religiously (https://safetyrisk.net/the-spirit-of-zero/), it’s time to question the foundation and stop tinkering at the edges.
Wynand says
One big question I have, and I know the answer is not easy, is: If you do not measure some number, how do you know if your initiative/change worked, and how do you shoe/prove it to top management. They often are so conditioned about measurements (tonnes, quality metrics, profit etc) that it becomes difficult to convince them about success without numbers, yet success in safety is not about numbers. I think this question is also what anchors many safety practitioners in the current counting system – it is easy to report and easy to prove (even if the proof is wrong).
Rob Long says
Wynand, how do you know if your marriage works? How do you know if your parenting works? How do you know if the teacher of your child is effective, successful and good? How do you know if any relationship works?
We all accept that the most important things in life can neither be measured or controlled but we accept and know they work implicitly.
Similarly, leaders in organisations cannot measure their leadership quantitatively either. Yet we turn to the ability to help other tackle risk and we want a number??? How bizarre!
BTW, the many attributions of qualitative things to numerics is delusional, its just as subjective, its all part of a conditioning process. WE accept a numeric converted to a qualitative assumption only because the culture tells us there is a connection, when there is none.
Most of what is attributed to a number is NOT a measure of safety, safety cannot be measured but it can be known intuitively. Any human-based relational exchange is like this.
The idea that numerics make safety people happy is just more attribution that is accepted by a culture that doesn’t have a clue about the definition of safety.
In the end nothing works unless it humanizes persons and generates ethical process and outcome.
Brent R Charlton says
When it’s difficult or impossible to measure maybe that’s telling us we shouldn’t be measuring?
Maybe get managers out of the office to have some conversations with workers about their job, what they do that is difficult, where they feel the greatest risks lie, and how they manage those risks? Conversation is always better than memos and emails. It’s hard for leaders to get to this because most are used to telling, not asking. The best leaders I know set an objective and then trust their people to get there, using conversations about progress along the way. They make suggestions when the team is stuck, but not in a “do it this way” manner. Poor leaders set an objective and then tell their people how to get there — and you had better do it their way! Am I on the right track here, Rob?
Rob Long says
Brent, so little in life can be measured. How strange that so little becomes the absolute for an industry that draws attributions from things that don’t say anything.
I find it so amusing that organisations and leaders set strategies and goals for periods of time and at the end don’t worry for a second that some of these aspirations are not achieved indeed, this is accepted as normal in strategic planning. Ah, but not so in safety, we have an apoplexy because we didn’t achieve goal zero.